Those four cups of coffee this morning are catching up with me, and that extra-large from 7-11 on the way to work isn’t helping. My molars are floating. The bladder’s full. I have to pee.
But I can’t. I’m terrified of what I might find in the bathroom. More so than after I watched “Ghoulies” as a child. Who knows who might be draining their lizard (or not) at the urinal next to me?
Luckily, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson and legislators in North Carolina got my six, making sure transgender Americans don’t sneak into the wrong stall and assault me. I didn’t quite realize this was a problem, but after listening to the folks boycotting chain store Target, I’m scared sh-tless.
We need the potty police to make every bathroom in America a “safe space.”
The public debate during election years can be fun — the battles of the culture war always find new, vitriolic tread. But if there ever was a solution in search of a problem, this is it.
With gay marriage legal and women signing up for combat roles, the extreme religious right is turning its sights on transgender Americans — those who identify with a sex other than the one they were born with — as the new boogeymen.
Under the guise of “religious freedom” laws, they want to bar the less than half of one percent of Americans who identify as transgender from relieving themselves in restrooms designated for their sexual identity (though, in all fairness, some bathroom experiences are truly religious).
“It is simply crazy, and the idea that grown men would be allowed alone in a bathroom with little girls — you don’t need to be a behavioral psychologist to realize bad things can happen, and any prudent person wouldn’t allow that,” said presidential hopeful Ted Cruz.
Well, Mr. Cruz, here’s some hard facts you may find more shocking than a cold toilet seat in the morning.
There is no epidemic of transgender Americans assaulting others in the bathroom. They go in, do their business, and leave, like the rest of us (well, maybe not U.S. senators visiting Boise, Idaho, but that’s another story).
There has been one, yes ONE, incident in the last 30 years (in Canada) where someone abused policies allowing transgender people into the bathroom. According to the FBI, none of the rapes reported in the U.S. involved a transgender American abusing open restroom policies.
If you’re worried about perverts, there are already laws against sexual assault, and changing the sign on the bathroom door isn’t going to make them any more enforceable.
Just as gun control laws don’t stop mass murderers from going on killing sprees, there’s nothing to stop a pervert from walking into the wrong bathroom. Are we to post sentries at every public restroom in America to solve a non-problem?
Frankly, they’d be more effective stationed outside confessionals when young boys go see their priest.
None of us can even imagine what those who identify as transgender go through every day, and it’s petty, sickening, offensive and un-American to exploit that lack of understanding for election-year gain.
We’ve been relieving ourselves together, without incident, for years. Why start now?
I don’t care who pees next to me. I just hope they wash their hands. Now, if you’ll excuse me…
